jknecht

Probably one before the other

I think it has always been this way. I worked in a video rental store in the 90's, and every movie was either a military story (Vietnam: bad, Russians: bad, current US military: good), courtroom drama, divorce drama, or high school / college comedy. A few decent psychological thrillers and campy horror flicks too. Basically a never-ending stream of the same movie with different actors. Hollywood has never been accused of being creative or daring.

At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes. Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.

All that said, I'm still a sucker for mindless entertainment. Even if movie night has become a bladder endurance contest.

A deadline is not the defining factor of a project; a clear definition of "done" is the defining factor. I have dozens of projects that have no specific deadline, but I know for sure when they will be done, because I will have achieved what I intended to do.

I will also add that, for photographers, there is bundle from Adobe that I consider to be a tremendous value. For about $10/month (where I live, it's easy to spend more than that on a single drink in a bar), I get access to both LightRoom and Photoshop. I've tried open source alternatives, and they are good, but none of them are necessarily better than the Adobe product.

I hate the fact that I am paying for yet another subscription, but in this case, over the course of 5 years, I am just barely paying the retail price of the old CD-based product. So (a) I don't feel like I'm being fleeced, and (b) I get to spread the payments out without really paying more.

Every time I've tried moving into the world of FOSS photography, I've wasted dozens of hours trying to figure out how to do relatively simple things, modifying and tweaking configurations, or completely removing and reinstalling because an update broke something that should have never broken. I work in software, so I'm not exactly a dummy on this stuff; and I know that sometimes that's just part of the deal - especially in a world where you get what you pay for.

In the end, I had to decide whether I wanted my hobby time to be focused on working with my photos or working with my software. And that is why I happily pay.

I would challenge the need to track partial completion. A well-crafted item in a checklist is either done or it is not.

If your concern is about indicating that you started something and are now waiting on results, then I would argue that there are actually 2 separate items there ("do the thing" and "receive the results").

The problem with a "partial completion" indicator is that it doesn't really tell you anything about how much of the thing is still left to do. You'll have to think about it when you come back to it, which you will do anyway if you simply leave the item unchecked.